


no matter what you do it won't go away

by AssyEr



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Bad Touch, Because of Reasons, Body Dysphoria, Body Horror, Carmilla Is Her Own Warning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Consensual Touching, Panic Attacks, brian has a bad time, but its not all bad, kind of, like he woke up and was metal thats no good, no beta we die like men, protective Jonny, there is comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25777114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssyEr/pseuds/AssyEr
Summary: Brian coming to terms with being made of metal.title from "Foolish," from the bright sessions (lauren shippen)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 119
Collections: Writer's Month 2020





	no matter what you do it won't go away

**Author's Note:**

> written for writters month, prompt being Hurt/Comfort
> 
> i might have exceeded on the hurt part.
> 
> It's long, lads, but i have divided it, not in chapter bc i didnt like how it would look but. there are pauses.

The first time Brian could remember being touched- well, the first time he remembered since he became what he was, was in the doc’s lab.

Remember would be stretching it. He knew that he spent at least a month in there. He knew that he hadn’t been conscious the whole time, and that the time he was felt like an eternity. But he couldn’t recall the events with much clarity, just feelings and sensations; burning, and freezing, and everything in between. The shine of a scalpel against a too bright light. A face in the darkness, not looking at him. And the panic at his inability to move.

He didn’t know exactly how much of his partial amnesia was because of trauma, and how much because the doctor hadn’t then bothered to turn on all of his systems yet. She had just been interested in sensations, in how much exactitude she could replicate them without anything else than a heart and the remains of a long dead person.

Later, when he started to remember those events, he would blame the passion which with she would peel and cut and observe the way the data entered him on concern for him. It was her that had returned life to him, after all, she just wanted to make sure she had done it right (as he had once done, a long time ago) (When had he done it? To whom?). Some years later, long after they got free of her, he would think back again on those days and see her actions for what they were, a new challenge, a project to see how far could she really go.

Once she had finished experimenting with his physicals sensations, she had properly turned him on, all systems up and running.

(Not all of them, not at the beginning. She had said that his motor functions still needed more time. It took him a few weeks to understand that she just wanted to have him for herself for a little more).

She introduced herself with soft words and talked to him with kindness, with a smile that was a little too sharp to be comfortable. Sometimes she would get angry, and would become cold silence, and if she was really mad she would leave him there, “forgetting” that he could not move and activate the light sensors.

That happened on the second day on his complete conscious stay in the lab. Brian had been alone, unable to move in the darkness, and began to feel himself drifting away, floating in nothingness. He panicked, even if his breath didn’t accelerate, or his chest didn’t feel as if it was pressing on him, and no limb trembled. Only his heart pounding faster and faster in a futile rhythm, a long forgotten memory of what it was supposed to be doing.

He screamed for her to get back, he thinks. And she had, tough he could not tell how much after.

She came back with an apologetic expression that was trying so hard to hide a grin of satisfaction. She whispered to him words of reassurance, petted his new hair in a way that might have tried to be comforting but was wrong, so wrong, _that was not what touch was supposed to feel like._

Brian was careful not to anger her after that. He tried hard to do what she asked. She wanted to get him to feel every single human emotion, writing his reactions in a pad that she carried everywhere she went. But he was unable to keep up to her standards, it seemed.

One would say that he would get used to it, the loneliness. The dark. He didn’t.

During that last week, she constantly touched him. A pat in the chest. A caress on his cheek. Fingers on his curls. The feeling was there, extreme on its precision. But it wasn’t right, it was too much and nothing at the same time. This was not how touch was supposed to feel like. It was cold and hard and analytical. The warmth he remembered had nothing to do with it.

The second time it had been Jonny.

The doc had just let him out of her lab, saying that a change of air would do him good. She told him to go and find his new crewmates, who would probably be anxious to meet him. There was something in the way that she had said it that made Brian’s inexistent arms’ hairs stand up, suddenly very nervous of what might be on the other side. But he felt even worse about staying there, in reach of her, and so he had gone.

He walked the corridors for what felt like a long and short while at the same time, until he stumbled into what seemed to be the ship’s hold. He was going to ignore it, but he heard someone cursing inside.

To say Brian was nervous about meeting someone else was an understatement. For all his fear of loneliness, announcing himself to some stranger seemed like a poor alternative right now. He almost turned back to the corridor.

But he couldn’t just keep ignoring the people he supposed he would be living with. Not for long, at least, and this seemed like as much of a good moment like any other.

He entered the room.

The man, a short person with way too many belts, hadn’t seemed to notice his presence. He had half his body inside a crate, looking for a full bottle of something, if the empty ones he got out and left on the floor next to him were any indication.

“Hello,” Brian said in a small, shy voice.

He jumped out of the crate, turning to him. His eyes were open wide in surprise, black lines surrounding them, and seemed incredulous to see him. Suddenly a pistol on his hand was pointing at him. Brian got his hands up, and they both froze.

Both hearts, metal and flesh ones, made thirty six beats before the stranger’s face turned into one of mad anger, and shot eight times at Brian’s chest.

He had been through a lot of different experience in that week, including but not limited to stabbing and hammering, but getting shot was a completely different thing. It felt like a really small and powerful punch, one that kept pressing into him as the brass dented.

Brian looked down at the marks, only six, and then up again to the man responsible.

He stared back, and the launched onto him, full rage at seeing him still standing up. The drumbot turned around to the corridor and ran as fast as he could.

He had only learned to use his new legs that morning, and still hadn’t got the hang of them, while the stranger had obviously more practice. At some point he jumped over him, and both feel to the floor.

Brian could feel the man on his back, every single metal buckle, the leather of his boot digging onto his leg. The knee pressing the small of his back and the arm around his neck and pulling his hair to not let him go. There was the mouth of the pistol, still hot, against his check and his eye and his neck and mouth still shooting and denting and breaking and his chest still ached now against the rough cold floor he wanted it to stop the man was pulling from some cables now it was wrong the hand was inside his head it was too much-

He must have died at some point he supposed. When he got up, all damaged was healed, and the man was nowhere to be seen. There were many more bullet casings than he remembered receiving, and blood. A lot of blood, and bits of bones with other things.

Brian got up and ran, hoping to find somewhere quiet and small where he couldn’t be found.

It had been… a while since he had been left to roam free in the ship. He knew it couldn’t be that long, no more than a month or two. It was difficult to say. In that time, he had gotten to know the rest of the crew.

They had been surprised. None of them had gotten to see the state in which he was brought aboard (none had even tried. Best not to know, not to see), and they had seen enough in their long lives to believe they couldn’t be surprised by anything that went out of that lab of hers. But then again, a man made of metal definitely raised the bar.

At least they had not been extremely rude (except for Jonny, but he knew to evade him, as everyone else had advised). They had just… stared at him. Eyes wide (he always ended up casting his gaze downwards, ashamed, looking to a distant corner because he wouldn’t stand to see the yellow that alarmed his crew mates so much), yes, and there was a moment of silence. But eventually they recovered, and presented themselves.

Ivy had been his next encounter, and the one who spent the shortest time staring. She asked for a name, with the blankest expression that he had ever seen. Then she told him his, and that if he wanted to meet the rest there was a 73.68% chance of finding them in the kitchen by the time. He had nodded and left, not knowing where the kitchen was but not wanting to ask either.

The quartermaster had actually found him two days after. They had told him their name, and that they had prepared a room for him to stay in. Brian let himself be lead there, glad that he wouldn’t need to keep sleeping on top of old crates. He stayed there a couple of days, lights on, listening to the different noises the starship made. Aurora, _she_ had told him. It was a beautiful name.

He made himself promise not to be alone, not for long periods of time. So he became an expert in finding who was in what room without entering. If it was _her_ , he would turn around and get as far away from there as he could without getting lost. Jonny he could normally share space with, as long as there was a third party involved. Otherwise, it was a big no for him.

Brian didn’t talk much, but he listened, which was how he learned that there was still a fifth member he hadn’t got to know. Nastya, the engineer and local cryptid, in Jonny’s words. He guessed that she would stop avoiding him when she was ready.

There was a part of him that wondered if it was because she was horrified of what he was. A single beating heart, controlling a machine much more complex than itself (it seemed so surreal, him being nothing else than a small organ). Or disgusted, perhaps would be more fitting. He neither fought nor agreed with those thoughts.

When he finally saw her, Brian knew that she had planned it.

It had been night hours, and he was taking a walk through the ship. He didn’t want to sleep, because it wasn’t sleeping, not really. Just, turning himself off. It reminded him of how much he was not. And, besides, he could get lost on his thoughts without worrying about meeting anyone; they would all be on their rooms.

He turned left in a corridor, and there she was, standing next to a wall, looking at him. He stopped dead as not to collide with her, surprised at the figure.

Nastya looked at him, up and down, as if trying to memorize what she saw. Brian was too shocked to see her there to feel self-conscious.

“I’m Brian,” he managed to say a moment later.

She nodded, told him her name, and turned around to walk away.

Brian just looked at her go, guessing that that had been as much of a presentation as he was going to get. She touched the wall of the corridor for an instant, before turning right and disappearing.

It appeared that she was known as a cryptid for a reason. Seeing her was a rare occurrence, and even rarer to speak to her. Almost every time she got out it was because Jonny dragged her out of the machinery room, and forced her to have some “socialization, for fuck’s sake”.

But not always. Sometimes she would spent time with them on her own will. Sometimes, she would talk and smile and joke.

He learned that she was in a relationship with the Aurora (whether or not _she_ , the doc, was aware, he did not know) and that came with certain privileges. For one, she would never meet anyone she didn’t want to. Or walk into a room expecting to be alone to already find someone there.

Which was why Brian was surprised to see her entering the bridge.

He had only recently started to spent time in there, trying to get acquainted with the controls. _She_ had told him to do so. He would not question it out loud.

She stood next to the door, not fully entering. After a moment of mutual staring, she spoke.

“I’m an engineer,” she told him, with a cyberian accent even more accentuated than normal.

Brian nodded. He already knew that, but it would be rude to point it out.

“What I’m trying to say,” she stopped for a moment, biting her lip and looking downwards. “Fuck, I should have told you before. I’m sorry.” Her hands went to her face, scrubbing it for a moment, and Brian knew this was important and he should pay attention. “I’m an engineer. I learn quickly. If something happens… Carmilla is not your only option.” Brian shrugged at the name. “I already helped the rest a couple of times. I can help you if you ever need me to.”

He let out a breath, a sudden relief coming over him. He hadn’t thought much about thing going wrong, but… it made sense. And to think of going to ask her for help… there was another option. It meant a lot.

“Thank you,” he told her, trying to convey as much gratitude in those two words as possible.

There was something else. Her offering to help him, whenever he needs it, it made him feel… not so alone.

Nastya just nodded. “Should have told you sooner,” she repeated herself, and went back to wherever she lurked.

Brian enjoyed watching Ashes set things on fire.

Well, enjoy would be stretching it. He was fascinated by the action. The way they would light a match or a lighter or whatever they had in hand. How they would hold it in front of their face for a moment, watching it dance in front of them, the shine reflected in their dark eyes and a smile grow in their lips, as if it was telling them some hidden secret (or burning one away).

He liked to observe the fascination in their face as the flames consumed whatever was near it, the smoke rising and rising, its smell sometimes getting trapped in their hair and clothes.

The reason why it fascinated him was because he could not understand it. Sitting in the sofa of the common room, pretending to read, it confused to see them so relaxed in front of the chimney (gently installed by Nastya to at least try and prevent them from burning the ship down), as it hadn’t been the same fire, no, the same smoke that had already killed them so many years ago. Perhaps they had forgotten. Perhaps he would too, one day.

Maybe it had to do with the knowledge that the lungs they had now could not be hurt by it. He was still afraid of the void of space, and he knew that it could still hurt. Were he to jump out of the airlock right now, well, he would float for a while near the ship. But he would still freeze. Whatever he had for muscles now would get stiff and impossible to move. His eyes would not bleed, but they would scream at him of failure, until they stopped working. His heart would slow down, and stop, until it was shocked into beating again, and everything would start again. He would eternally revive his nightmare until someone got him back inside.

Maybe it did make a difference.

He wondered if they knew that _she_ still had their lungs.

Well, he supposed she had. She had conserved his body. Him. The real Brian. She had shown him to himself, in some experiment to try and measure something only she knew.

The doctor had made a good work, he had to admit. The body he had stared at was certainly similar to the metal one he saw in the mirror. She had even replicated the tattoo on his chest, his name (he knew it had been a gift from before, but before the life that had ended him in the cosmos. It had been the only thing he had been given to start that one, a name for himself). The curls were creepily identical, tough his looked softer than the cooper ones he wore.

Whatever she had tried to make him feel showing him that, he had definitely done so. The picture was engraved on his mind forever.

He supposed that she still had him. Somewhere in the depth of the ship, probably in some dark room not even Nastya dared to go to. He was probably inside that same tube, floating in that disgusting liquid, alone.

It wasn’t right. He shouldn’t be kept like that, not being able to escape that personal hell even in death.

Brian put a hand in his chest, in a small spot where the noise and movement of machinery below was drown by the constant tump tump of the only thing alive inside of him.

At least there was a small part of that person who escaped, for better or worse.

The doctor had lost interest on him after a month, no longer requesting his presence at her lab (or at least not more frequently than the others). She had locked herself in there, now, all of her energy focused in some new project of hers.

In that time, Brian had come to… not be at peace with the new feature he discovered, his “morality switch”. But accepted it. There was nothing he could do about it, anyway.

Jonny had gotten over his murder phase. That did not meant that he wouldn’t randomly hunt him down, just that he would do it with the same frequency he did to the rest of the crew. Over all, he would say that their relationship was advancing into something similar to a friendship.

Which is why when he heard him enter the kitchen he half prepared himself to die. It was a habit, now. The first mate wouldn’t rest until killing him if he really got his head into it, and it was much easier and faster to just let him get over with it.

And it wasn’t like he could make anything about it, not right now at least. He was on MjE, so he couldn’t hurt him even to save himself.

So Brian kept doing his thing, kneading some dough he hoped he could cook into bread. His last attempts had somehow ended in… something that was not bread. He wished to get it right this time.

“Watcha’ doing?” Jonny asked from behind him. He put both of his hands on his shoulders and jumped, half clinging on him to see what he had on hands.

It came as a surprise, the whole feeling of wrongness. His hands on him, the fingers rounding his shoulders and grabbing, squeezing, his nails over the shirt but still feeling horrible scratching against the metal under. His metal. The heat on his back that was not his but felt as if because of how close it was and his feet digging into his legs and all this on his brain and it was all data it shouldn’t be because he was not meant to feel like this but he had no skin there was just metal and the nerves that had been installed onto it.

He wanted to shove him out. He couldn’t without risking hurting him. He couldn’t make it stop it was all over him-

“Please stop,” he asked him, almost a beg, could be considered a whimper.

It was like with _her_ , _she_ would touch him and hurt him and make him feel until it was too much but she would continue and he couldn’t tell her no because it would be worst but he had told Jonny no and he was off him now.

He had gotten off him, and was now on the opposite side of the kitchen, hands up and looking at him with a concerned expression.

He could still feel the ghost of his touch all over him, everywhere, the numbers and information dangling in his brain, inside of him. He rubbed his shoulders and wherever he could reach, trying to get rid of the feeling.

“Brian? Are you alright?” Jonny asked, attentive to his movements.

He wanted to scream at him to stop looking at him like that, like _she_ did. A small hissing noise distracted him.

It was coming from him. Right. From his body made of brass, which he had apparently managed to overheat. Nastya had said that it was probably a reaction from the mechanism trying to follow his heart rhythm. He could not cry or shake properly anymore, but his body did this thing now.

Looking at it, it seemed like a bad exchange. Tears for a hissing cooling system. Touch for numbers.

Jonny called at him.

He didn’t know what was wrong with himself. It was not as if he had managed to… what? Evade contact? That would have been impossible. But his reactions seemed to be random. Sometimes he would be fine with Ashes’ claps on his back, and other times (most times), he couldn’t stand to even brush with the others, and would go and lock himself on his room, showering until the ghosts left him.

It wasn’t fair. He would take the overwhelming sensations every time if only for the consistency.

Jonny called once more, moving a hand in front of his eyes, at some good thirty centimeters of distance. Brian snapped out of it.

“What?” he asked.

“Are you alright?” Jonny repeated, worry all over him, tough he tried to hide it.

Brian wished he could lie. “No,” he said. “But I’ll be after a shower, probably.”

He started walking towards the door, all thoughts of bread long since forgotten, when Jonny got in front of him, blocking his way. The bastard had probably guessed what setting he was on, and knew he couldn’t push him off his path.

Not that he would, if he could. The thought of putting his hands on him made him squirm in place, and would probably make his stomach clench if he still had a flesh one.

“Jonny,” he protested.

The first mate remained stubbornly on his place, a hard expression on him. “What was it?” he asked, not bothering to elaborate.

Brian closed his eyes in a pained expression. Couldn’t he just ignore the question? Apparently not. “You touching me. I don’t like it when people touch me. I can normally manage, tough,” he told him honestly.

Jonny pressed his lips, frowning his brow as if having an opinion but refusing to voice it. Finally, he nodded and moved to the side, allowing Brian to practically run to his room.

There, he threw his clothes to some dark corner, and tried to wash the sensation away, not stopping until an hour later. There was nothing else that could be done by then, he concluded, and sprinted to his bed, still wet, deciding to sleep until it all stopped.

It was the middle of the night, or what seemed to count as night in the Aurora by Brian’s calculations.

He still didn’t like to sleep, didn’t like the way it felt turning every system off. But walking was better, it gave him a chance to think and listen and not be alone. He could never be alone, not really, not inside the Aurora. That thought comforted him.

He was currently exploring the lower deck of the ship, where all the machinery was visible and loud, and heated the place. He liked it, the inherent warmth of the place. He liked to feel it, the way it managed to heat even his own body, which was always trying to run in a lower temperature a human one was supposed to. He could pretend, before the cooling systems kicked in. And even those he could delay for a while, grasping those last second of falsehood.

Given the high hours of the night, he hadn’t expected to meet anyone. That’s why her voice startled him so much.

“What are you doing here?” Nastya demanded.

She was sitting in the floor, surrounded by tools and metal and parts of some complicated machinery Brian couldn’t even begin to understand. He wondered if she knew what time it was. Down there, it all looked the same.

He wanted to apologize, say that he couldn’t sleep and walking helped. That he didn’t realized he had come this far. “It’s warm down here,” was what he said instead.

That seemed to touch a nerve in her. She put down the wrench she was holding. “It is,” she said, and gestured to a clear space near her, in some kind of invitation, Brian supposed.

He sat down.

Neither of them said anything. Nastya just went back to fixing whatever that was, and Brian watched her do so. There was something calming about the way her hands moved confidently, sure of what they were doing. Grabbing every piece with care, making them fit with the rest. And when they didn’t, the way she left everything else to the side, focusing on that and only that. Nastya would then grab some rag, and clean the item while observing and trying to figure out what was wrong.

She was never crude or brutish, taking her time and patiently fixing whatever needed to be fixed. There was some kind of oxymoron hidden in there, in the way the engineer held each piece with a care and delicacy more proper perhaps of a painter or a poet, but Brian could not find it. When Nastya held the Aurora in her hands there was nothing but love and art to be seen.

Brian knew there had been someone, once, that had held him like that. The picture of hands over his stomach and a laugh in a field full of sunshine evoked too many feeling in him for it to be fake. He just wished to have something more than a grieving heart and the echo of warmness.

“I’m cold,” he whispered out of the blue.

Nastya didn’t say anything, but she moved her head towards him to let him know she was listening.

He decided to keep speaking. “I don’t fell cold. I should, I mean, I constantly run at nineteen degrees Celsius. But. Nothing.”

“It would be a shitty design if you felt so,” she finally spoke. Her words were crude, but he knew that that was just how she talked. She wasn’t trying to be mean. At least he hoped so.

Brian hums in acknowledgement, and lets the silence settle for a moment more. Then, “I thought that the warmth here would help” he comments.

She did not asks if it did, and he isn’t surprised by that, because they know that they both know already what would that answer be.

He doesn’t know if it was okay to ask. Their relationship was not that close for them to get with those feelings. But she had told him to go to her if she needed help, and, well, he did need it.

“How do you cope with it? The cold?” he asks.

Because he is tired of it. He is tired of that icy blanket that always seemed to cover him, and he was tired of how little he minded. How sometimes he could just ignore it. He hated those thigs, little reminders or mockeries of how little human he really was.

Anyone else she would have shoot. No, she would have shoot and then thrown into the gears and machinery of the Aurora, and let them to die once and once and once again until her love asked her to get them out. She would make sure that they would never be in peace again, and that every step in the ship became a Russian roulette. But she doesn’t, because she had offered him help. And because she knew he was genuine. He reminded her of herself, years before. Trying to escape of the hard bite on her bones, the limbs that threatened to become numb if she didn’t move them in a while.

Just this once she would tell him.

Nastya doesn’t look up to him when she speaks.

“You don’t. You wake up because you’re physically unable to keep sleeping, and breathe out of habit. You get up and eat something because the feeling of hunger is annoying, and dodge Jonny’s bullets because the sensation of your body expelling lead is an unpleasant one. You shower because if not the others would kill you and skin you to get rid of the smell.

You play cards with Ashes because their excuses of why there are five aces in a single deck of cards strikes you as funny. And you keep moving because Ivy’s attempts to predict the future in base of your behavior are entertaining, and Jonny’s attempts to keep being unpredictable are even more.

You don’t cope. And you don’t forget. Never. But sometimes you have better things to do.” It was not enough, Nastya knew, and not what he had come looking for, but it was something.

Brian nodded, lost in thought again.

After his encounter in the kitchen with Jonny, the first mate seemed to evade him, his only sign of existence he saw on those days being the bread he had tried to make, all cooked and ready to be cut into pieces. Brian had made himself a sandwich with it, and tried not to think too much into what it meant.

It took three weeks for Jonny to stop avoiding him on a regular basis. But things were different now, he noticed. He didn’t seem to be up to hunt him down for sport, for one. He also seemed to stick closer to him when they were all together, sitting on the same couch, or just remaining on his side of the room (but not touching him. He never touched him since that day).

He didn’t catch on what he was doing until a fortnight after Jonny started.

They were in the common room, all five of them needing the comfort of company. That afternoon, or day, or whatever had been a long one, starting with _her_ being on a bad mood. And when _she_ was on a bad mood, the crew did whatever it takes to stay out of her way. The only rule was hide alone, because groups were easier to find, and the outcome was always worse.

Ivy was on the floor, reading some old book she had gotten the last time they were planet side. She wasn’t paying much attention to it, Brian could tell by the way her eyes often stood still over a single word, or how she tensed up with every sound, no matter how small.

Nastya was next to her, sitting cross legged and trying to fix some old machinery from God’s knows where. Now and then she asked Ashes for some tool, who was sitting on some pillow next to the group with a box full of various metal things on their lap.

On the couch behind them were Brian and Jonny, each on one corner of the thing. Brian had a banjo he found in some abandoned room, but dared not to play any note. He just stared at it, deep in thinking.

“Are you done with it?” Ivy asked Jonny, referring to her coat she had given him to patch up.

He gave it two stitches more before answering. “It is now. You tear it again and I’ll sew it into your skin”

She paid no attention to the threat, and instead got up to grab it, supporting herself on Brian’s knee.

If he had been more human than machine, he probably wouldn’t have been able to hold a yelp of surprise, or a sharp whine. He was human enough however to need to close his eyes for a moment at the sensations that came over him.

The hand had been there for only a moment, but he could still feel it, all warm and pressing over him, a part of the weight of his friend focused on that single spot. He fought against the need of rubbing his hand over the place. The end was not worrying his friends, and the means were enduring a few seconds of wrongness.

But he apparently wasn’t as good as an actor as he thought, because he could feel Jonny looking at him with an expression of… he actually didn’t know what it was, to be honest. Anger? Pity? He didn’t care, he just wanted to get rid of the numbers dancing on his knee.

He watched him rub incessantly his knee, and then pull his legs up and against his chest in a protective manner. Brian didn’t meet his eyes, instead finding fascinating shapes and patterns in the old stained couch.

They both kept at it for the rest of the night, while one by one the others mechanisms left the room, until only the two of them remained.

“Why did you do that?” Jonny asked, tired of the senseless silence.

“Do what?”

“That,” he repeated angrily. “With Ivy. Just, let her do it.”

He knew what he meant. He did not want to answer.

“She meant no harm,” Brian replied in a vague sense.

_Just drop it_ , he thought.

“I didn’t either, and you still called me off.” A pause. “They would like to know, if they are hurting you.”

Brian became frustrated. “They are not- look, it’s fine. I can mostly take it.”

“Bullshit.”

Oh, that asshole. That hypocrite, lying two faced bastard. Right now, the means were calling out his hypocrisy, and the end finishing this stupid conversation so he could go to his room and shower and definitely not think about whatever the hell he was doing with his life.

“Well, we don’t call you on yours, when you say you’re fine and go all fearless and brave,” Jonny paled, not expecting the reverse Uno card he just threw at him. “So fuck off” Brian finished, getting up and storming out of the room.

The crew was together in the common room, having an uncharacteristically good time. Nastya had made them a small Space Foosball out of parts that Ashes gave her (that might or might not have once been part of Jonny’s bed), and they were having a lot of fun.

Nastya had teamed with Jonny, like always, which left Ashes with Brian. Ivy said that she was having her own brand of fun, watching them play and trying to predict the results of the game. So far she had been able to calculate the exact score at the end of a game of ten, and had advanced to estimating the total duration of it.

The game was on the final moments, with the crew playing for the decisive score. Ashes had failed to get the ball past Nastya, who then successfully passed it to Jonny. He got it past the quartermaster, and the Brian’s first line of defense, and rolled the bar with all the force he was capable of, throwing the ball to the goal with a maximum speed.

But Brian had already guessed where it would go, and had successfully moved the goalkeeper to block its path, throwing the ball to the other side of the metal field. Ashes got a quick hold of it and Nastya, who hadn’t been as quick as to keep up with the change, could do nothing but a vague, unsuccessful try of interception as the ball entered the goal and made the final score.

Ashes screamed in triumph as Jonny cursed at Nastya, who was shouting back at him and about to get the wrench from her belt. Ivy said something about percentages and probabilities, and Brian was jumping a little from happiness, a huge grin encompassing his face.

He looked at his other half of the team, and saw the emotion reflected in them. A laugh got out without him noticing. They raised a hand to pat his back.

Brian froze and clenched his hand in what he hoped was a discreet gesture. Better get over it, quick and maybe painless. It was impossible to say at this point whether it would be just a friendly pat or followed by that wrongness that sometimes came over him.

He closed his eyes.

A shot rang out on his ears.

When he opened them again, Ashes was lying on the floor, a bullet hole in the middle of their forehead covering them in blood. He looked up to see Jonny with his gun on hand, still smoky, and looking over the corpse of his friend with a serious expression.

It took the mate a moment to realize that all eyes were on him, not surprised but annoyed at the sudden violence. He holstered his gun and looked at the crew with a carefree expression.

“What? As if you hadn’t seen that coming,” he told them, and Nastya rolled her eyes at him, saying something about bad losers. Ivy just corrected her estimations.

While Jonny and Nastya discussed whether or not it was okay to kill someone for being an insufferable ass (in Jonny’s words), with the main counterpoint being how long they would have to wait before being able to play a rematch, Brian was looking at the gun that had fired the shot.

Had it… had it _really_ been because they were being annoying? Jonny wouldn’t just shoot someone because they tried to touch him, right? That just seemed… too nice for him.

The first mate looked up from the discussion on his direction, and locked eyes with him. He maintained eye contact for a moment with what Brian would call a serious expression (because the alternative would be a concerned one) and then moved them to look at him from head to toe, before giving himself a small nod and continuing bantering with his sister.

Brian… did not know how to take that, so he took advantage of the forced break they were having and went to the kitchen for a quick snack, asking the others if they wanted him to bring anything.

Brian was officially Aurora’s pilot now. Not that she needed one, but the doctor didn’t seem to care about that. Even if it made him nervous to be confined to one place where she could come and find him when looking for him, the peace and calm compensated it.

The bridge was far enough for Brian not to hear the bullets Jonny shot around the place, as he preferred to remain in the more interesting sectors. And he was not alone, besides Aurora, he found out the first week in practice. There were small, semi mechanical spiders lurking round the controls and panels.

Nastya had explained him that they were part of the ship’s motoric system, and a vital one. He didn’t retain everything from the explanation, as she tended to ramble a bit when Aurora was concerned, but he caught enough to know that the one he saw weren’t all. Just those he would have to direct if he wanted to control their red.

He played songs to them, and talked a bit. With time, they seemed to even come to care for him, and let themselves be seen more and more. They rested on him, in his shoulders or hat, and welcomed a nice pat now and then.

Being the pilot of the ship also involved planning and strategizing with the navigator. Ivy would normally come to him to the bridge, maps on her arms, and they would trace a route to follow for whatever destination the doctor had ordered to get them to.

She liked to be informed of those places before they got there, and would randomly tell Brian facts about those. She would talk about how advanced a civilization was, their main activities, their relationship with the rest of the universe.

Ivy Alexandria knew a lot of things, Brian found early in their relationship. She probably knew more about his home planet than himself.

He could try to find out where he was from. He could ask her about the coordinates of where he was found, and make some quick calculations.

Every day, the question died at the end of his tongue.

That evening they had just finished tracing the route, and Brian had moved to the controls to put the ship in the right direction. Ivy was playing with a pencil and one of the spiders, who was enjoying the break before it had to get back to work. It liked the woman.

Ivy spoke in the silence. “You know, I’ve calculated an 89.94% chance of dying for people trying to touch you, and a 100% whenever Jonny is near and alive.”

Brian froze. He did not want to talk about it. He hoped she didn’t make him. He was on MjE right then, and if she really tried it would not be difficult to get him to explain.

“I have also calculated an 87.8% chance of you knowing the reason why, and a 93.7% of you not wanting to reveal it if you do.” Her voice, like always, was mechanical and contained, devoid of feelings.

“You’ve gotten better at predicting me,” he told her, because what the hell was one supposed to say to that.

“It is an expected outcome of gaining more data,” she stands up, grabbing the maps and utensils she brought with her. “I’ll be in the library if you need me,” she said, walked out of the room.

Neither of them mention the conversation again, but Brian notices small changes. She is more careful standing near him. Accidental brushes that sometimes happened as the result of being in the same space are no more. She doesn’t touch him to get his attention.

The room was quiet, everybody frozen in place. Looking at _her_.

“I just thought that one of you might want to volunteer”, she told the crew, reclining over the door of the common room, all sharp angles and red smile.

No one breathed for a moment. Then,

“I’ll do it,” Jonny said quickly, as if spitting the words.

Nastya was the first to look at him, not quite reaching his eyes. “You did it last time, I’ll go”

Brian had been told that she sometimes did this, told them about a new experiment she was going to perform, and leave it to them to decide who would be the lucky one. The general belief was that she enjoyed watching them discuss, almost always shoot, and decide, in that order.

That evening she had gotten all four of them in the common room to announce her intentions. The only mechanism absent was Ivy, who was currently in some planet per the doctor’s request, getting more books and information of the place before it got completely destroyed.

The first mate turned at her, head high again at confronting something more familiar.

It was the first time he got to see her game in action, tough.

“No you are not. I said I go, and that’s final”

It should be him. They claimed to take turns into who went there, tough it almost always ended being Jonny. He had a tendency of shooting anyone who claimed to be the one going with her.

“Nastya went the other time. It’s… it’s technically my turn,” Ashes said, voice failing them at the end.

He couldn’t bring himself to move.

“Fucking no,” Jonny barked.

She was looking at Brian, watching for his reaction.

This was another experiment of hers, then. She probably knew already that he was on EjM, and wanted to know whether he would do the right thing or not. What end would be the one he choose.

Why couldn’t he move?

“Jonny we take turns for a reason,” Nastya said more agitated now, tired of having the same discussion every single time. He couldn’t just shove himself into her one and other and always and then pretend that everything was fine. She clenched her fists, angry.

“I should go,” Brian managed to say, barely a whisper. He did not want to go. He didn’t want to be back there strapped and touched and experimented and…

No one payed attention to him. “Fuck you,” Jonny told Nastya.

He needed to step forward and go with her. He couldn’t. Not like this. Not in EjM.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Ashes shouted at him.

The end was helping his friends, the means were taking his hand to his neck and flip the switch. He wouldn’t have option, then. He would have to go. He wouldn’t be able to stay if he wanted.

He wanted to stay. He wanted to flip the switch.

He would be there again with her and she would touch him and drown him and electrocute him and get every single part outside of him, but that wasn’t him because it was not _right,_ that metal body couldn’t be his.

She would be angry and leave him again and he would move and struggle and scream in terror because he knew that he had a single minute until the lights turned off, fifty seconds, forty and he couldn’t do anything but wait and struggle and he would be alone in the dark.

“Your motherfucking first mate, and the quickest shot,” Jonny said, gun already in hand.

Jonny didn’t want to shot, because he knew he would be the next one on the floor and whoever remained would be the one going there. But Ashes wouldn’t want him to shot, either, because maybe he would go for her and that left Nastya with her, and they didn’t want that, because Nastya was always the worst to react, retreating to god’s knows where, not reacting for weeks.

Nastya wouldn’t want him to shoot because he almost surely would go for her, and both Ashes and Jonny had already taken her turn too many times.

Brian couldn’t move his hand. He managed to repeat himself, because his arm wouldn’t obey him but his mouth did. They ignored him again.

The room erupted into shouting.

They were all shouting and Brian said something again but nobody payed attention to him and it was too much noise and they didn’t listened to him and it was not the first time but there was also another time before that. And he was there.

They were all shouting, shouting at him, at themselves. Shouting monster (was that here or there? He didn’t know where he was). He tried to shout, he shouted until his throat bleed (it couldn’t bleed anymore, he had no blood, why was it bleeding) but no one listened to him. He kept at it, begging for them to stop. They covered his eyes (he couldn’t see he couldn’t see) and tied him down (he couldn’t move he fell to the ground he couldn’t see he couldn’t move) to something harsh (everything was harsh against him) and no one cared what he said what he screamed. Brian was tied down to something, and that something was moving and the thing that had been on his eyes fell down but he still couldn’t see.

He couldn’t see because he was in the dark. His eyes were frozen, cold covering him. He still managed to scream but there was no one there to answer (there was, they were calling him back) he was alone and lost and frozen (he was not. A shot was fired. Someone must have fired it there was someone out there) and he couldn’t move (he couldn’t he was frozen it all fell too hard his body metal hard).

But he was not alone because there was someone calling his name calling him Brian in the way the other ones didn’t, they had called him monster, but they had to be there because they were touching him. He could feel them on his shoulders and his arms and his head.

He could feel hands stroking him. Warm hands warming him up. He was not freezing and he was not alone.

They called him Brian and drumbot and spoke soft things to him. He was not alone, or freezing, or being forced into anything. And he realized he was not in the dark, but was sitting in a very illuminated room, with people over him.

He knew those people. They were his people. They were the ones that had called at him, and touched and listened.

Nastya. Nastya was over him, concerned expression and looking at his eyes, holding his head firm. Her hands were cold, but he always was colder. She felt warm in contrast. He looked back at her.

There was somebody. Some body. Lying in the floor in front of him. He knew him. It was Jonny, with a hole on his chest and bleeding all around him. But he would be fine. He would come back, they all did.

Ashes next to him asked him something. They were wrapping him in a half embrace, and they were warm. He burrowed into them.

He didn’t know how long they laid there. She had left the room after seeing his little attack. Jonny had gotten back on his feet, and after taking a look at the three of them, the position they were cuddled in, left the room. Brian heard some shooting from inside the ship. He clutched Nastya closer.

“Please,” he begged them. He would have fallen on both knees if he thought that would help convince them.

Ashes was torn between looking at him and at the thing inside the tube that looked like him. A fleshier version of him. Brian had never seem them so nervous before.

They had been exploring the ship together. Ashes had said that it was their duty as quartermaster to know every inch of the place, and that they might need him and his strength to clear the path. Most of the places had been abandoned for centuries after all. They didn’t know what they could find.

They had definitely not expected this.

“She will be mad when she finds out,” they told him. Not if, when.

He knew what he was asking. How much it would cost. Her rage.

But he couldn’t leave him there, alone in the dark. He just couldn’t. “Please,” he repeated.

Ashes sighed, terrified of what they were about to do.

“It won’t burn wet as it is,” they said, getting a match from their pocket and fidgeting with it.

“ _He_ ,” Brian corrected automatically, and walked to the tube, ready to break him free.

She found out, of course. And it was not pleasant. She went after Ashes, too, even though Brian tried to take all the fault. But it was done, and she couldn’t take that away from him. She could lock him, leave him alone in the dark, but there would always be a Brian who got free.

He found the first mate on an empty room, looking at the window next to an airlock. He had a bottle in one hand, and a gun in the other. There was blood around him, Brian noticed.

“There you are,” he announced his presence.

Jonny jumped, startled, apparently not having noticed the metal man enter. He clutched the gun with more intention, tough not pointing it at neither of them.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Brian sat next to him, grabbing his bottle and taking a sip. The other man relaxed a little at his actions, lowering his gun (but not holstering it).

“To apologize,” Brian told him.

“That’s a shitty way to apologize, you know. Stealing my alcohol.” He took his bottle back.

The pilot looked at him. Jonny looked back.

“Nastya told me what happened that time” neither of them needed to ask what time he referred to, because it had also been the last time they had been together in a room. “She told me that when I went down you all worried,” went desperate, were the words she used. “That the only thing you said was not to touch me. Even shoved Ashes when they tried to get near.” They had been all lost at seeing Brian like that, not reacting. No one knew what to do, and don’t touch him was the only thing that seemed to stay with the first mate.

“Until _she_ shot you,” Brian finished.

Jonny was really considering shooting himself to avoid the shameful conversation he seemed so kin on having. “Didn’t seem to need my help at the end,” he took another drink.

There was definitely not enough alcohol to get him through this. He would finish the bottle and then kill himself. Or Brian. Or both.

“It’s not about that.” He took a breath. “I talked with Nastya, you know? About my… touch thing” Brian was not looking at him, instead now interested in the window, and the cosmos outside.

Nop. Bad idea. He casted his eyes downwards, playing with his hands. “She said that it could be touch aversion. It did sound like that, but… well, that it could also be more of a… mental stuff. Psychological problem, with trauma and all that. That it could be me just not fully accepting the mechanization.” He looked at Jonny’s bottles now, because his metal hands were no more a good point of focus.

Jonny mistook his glance and handed him the liquid. He didn’t refuse it, grabbing it and trying to ignore the way the glass sounded against his lips.

“And that’s what you wanted to tell me? Thank you for being my nanny, but fuck off?” he asked as he watched him drink.

Brian putted the bottle down on his side, now empty. He took his time breathing, in and out, with his eyes open into the floor. Finally, after a moment, he glanced at the mate, who was half sitting stiff next to him. He had his hand with the pistol frozen midair, and the expression of a deer caught in headlights.

He extended his hand to him.

He only could do that because he was on EjM.

“Shake my hand,” he asked him. It was trembling a little.

“Wha’?” Jonny said, looking at the hand like it was going to kill him.

“I said,” Brian repeated, “shake my hand.”

“The fuck, no” he got up and away from him.

Brian followed behind. “I want you to do it” he insisted.

Jonny walked even faster, not looking back. “Listen, I don’t know what kind of sadomasochism shit you’re into, but I don’t want to take part on it,” he turned to the left corridor.

“It’s not-.” In a quick movement, not necessarily agile taking in account how drunk the other was, he was in front of him and blocking the way. “It’s not masochism. I want to. And I trust you. And I think that because of that it won’t feel wrong, but I want to know. Please,” he finished.

Brian extended his hand once again, looking at his friend in the eye.

He still seemed suspicious of him, and the hand. He waited for him to take it back, and bucker the fuck off. He didn’t.

Jonny put his hand on his, not quite grabbing, definitely not shaking. He did not stop looking at Brian.

There was a moment of silence before he let out a sigh, and smiled at Jonny. 

It was late in the Aurora, or at least deep into the sleep cycle of her crew.

Ivy was sleeping in her bedroom, as so was Tim and Ashes. The Toy Soldier was pretending to also do the same.

Nastya was deep into the veins of her love, as she had been since Jonny and the Toy Soldier had “decided” to leave, a few years ago.

Carmilla was no more, tough no one knew that.

Brian was lying on his bed, drifting from sleep to awareness, staring at the ceiling. His nigh lamp was on, like always.

The door opened, Jonny on the other side. He did not enter.

The drumbot sat up, letting him know he was awake. Or that he was turned on at least.

Jonny was trembling, head to toe, and bloodstained eyes. He didn’t say anything.

He also didn’t have his gun, Brian noticed. Whatever happened, it couldn’t be good.

“Jonny?” he called him. No answer.

Standing up, he walked to the first mate, moving a hand in front of him. Nothing. Brian put his hands on his shoulders, and guided him into the bed. Jonny did not resist.

Once there, he kneeled to get his boots off of him, and left them on the side of the bed, where he could find them if he wanted. Next, he got his vest and most of his belts, as well as his holster. All this he folded carefully and left on top of a chair.

He was worried. Jonny was not reacting to any of this. He just appeared, in the middle of the night, and there wasn’t even blood to give him an idea of what happened.

Brian turned back on him, and saw that he was now lying on his side, gaze fixed in nothing. He approached him, putting a hand on his head.

That seemed to get to him, as he finally looked at him, and then his hand. He didn’t say anything, tough, just grabbing his sleeve (not touching him) and pulling him onto himself. Jonny looked back at him, asking.

Carefully not to hurt him, he climbed onto the bed, on the side next to the wall. The first mate preferred the other, he knew, because it allowed him to easily escape the room if he wanted to. He pressed lightly on his back, and Jonny turned around, hiding his face on Brian’s chest. He decided that whatever it was could wait until the morning to be explained, and surrounded him with his arms.

It felt right the whole time, and not once did it occurred him that it might not.

**Author's Note:**

> If you think i forgot some tag that i should add let me know!
> 
> Kudos/Comments makes me feel like, when you have your favourite pack of snacks, and you are sad because you think you ate all of them? But then it turns out there is a last one! Well, like that, just that in this case i dont supress my stupid-ass smile


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